With unemployment yet again set squarely above 9% and 14 million Americans still out of work, President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress last Thursday served as a blunt reminder of the dire condition of America’s flailing economy. Obama seeks to fulfill the unanswered promises of TARP with a new recovery initiative carrying a price tag of nearly a half trillion dollars. Among the parts of his plan that he failed to elaborate on, Obama mentioned yet again the need to raise taxes on the wealthy and close tax incentives to corporations. In a joking tone, Obama observed that some in Congress had made a promise to never raise taxes.  Although the pledge signed by many in Congress to Americans for Tax Reform most certainly promised to not raise taxes, it was a pledge to citizens concerned with the growth of government spending and an unsustainable addiction to debt. Obama’s glib reference to this pledge is one of many reasons that his divisive jobs speech imbued his newest initiative with the political rancor necessary to all but guarantee its failure in congress.

The moment that Obama decided to schedule his speech one day earlier, at the same time as a significant Republican primary debate, he cast a shadow of politics over what should have been a unifying message for all Americans.  Upon House Speaker John Boehner’s refusal to host the speech at a time when many Americans would be forced to choose between watching a debate between presidential candidates and the president’s speech, President Obama backed down and rescheduled.  Despite his embarrassment over the scheduling snafu, Obama proceeded to play partisan politics by presenting a plan that would be “paid-for” by the same bipartisan super committee that the president and congress established to confront government spending.  Rather than allow the super committee to draw up its own plans and make a real dent in this nation’s debt crisis, Obama decided to pass the buck of his plan over to them. He also discussed reforming entitlements to help pay for the plan, again taking away the authority of the bipartisan super committee on an item committee members expected to confront in a bipartisan fashion. Obama used the word “taxes” 23 times, and urged Congress to “pass” his jobs bill 20 times, yet did not use the word “bipartisan” even once.  You do the math.

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Last week, after a small scheduling conflict that several pundits laughably attempted to portray as political, Pres. Obama stood before a joint session of Congress to lay out his new plan dubbed the American Jobs Act. Keeping to his current strategy of giving the opposition nearly everything they want (while hoping that they might stray from their own strategy of only uncrossing their arms to give him the finger) nearly 55% of the $447 billion cost of the plan is in tax cuts.

The cuts include two payroll taxes aimed at working Americans and small businesses (who employ a majority of jobs in the country). The employee tax cuts count for $175 billion of the plan, offering around $1,500 to families taking in $50,000 annually. The other $70 billion is for small businesses covering a 50% cut on the first $5 million in payroll taxes as well as a credit for hiring veterans. The rest of the plan includes money for many construction projects throughout the country as well as the renewal of extended unemployment benefits and aid to state governments in an effort to help them avoid laying off the people who police our streets, put out our fires, and teach our children how to read (useless fat-pensioned freeloaders that they are).

As the President repeated several times in his speech, the proposals in this plan have been supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. There is also $10 billion in the plan to create an infrastructure bank which will allow the creation of several more construction jobs over the next few years, an idea first proposed by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). Based on this pre-existing solidarity, as well as the immediate need to address the 9.1% unemployment our country is facing, the President urged Congress twenty times to pass this legislation. Already a number of ideologically divided think tanks are lobbing their roses and rat carcasses on the bill with economists on one side saying it will work well and economists on the other saying it absolutely will not; now’s a time when we have to ask ourselves just how theoretical the study of economics actually is.

With a majority of money spent being tax breaks which would add more to the deficit (that thing that became the biggest issue in Washington when the opportunity arose to make it so) his own base might be reluctant to support it, or, for that matter, pass it. But along with the tax cuts and the President’s proposal to add the $447 billion to the $1 trillion of spending cuts the new Super Committee is supposed to find by late December, finding enough votes on the other side of the aisle might be possible. The reason this should, as the President repeatedly urged, be passed by both parties immediately is that small businesses and working families have been hit almost as hard as the $14 million unemployed in this country, and encouraging them both to consume and hire new employees can turn around the current devastating direction both the middle class and the economy as a whole. It is cutting the right kind of taxes.

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Employers taking part in the Job Outlook 2011 Fall Preview survey from NACE are expected to hire 13.5 percent more new college graduates from the class of 2011 then they did from the class of 2010. This is up from the 5.3% increase that this same survey reported last year.

The report shows the highest increase of 23.5 percent in the West, with the number of 2011 projected hires growing to 1, 915 from the actual hires of 2010 at 1,550. The Southeast reported the lowest increase at 8.3 percent, with the projected hires for 2011 at 8,644 from 7,984 actual hires in 2010. Even though the percent change is greatest in the West, the largest number of projected hires is still taking place in the Southeast – something FSU students can be optimistic about.

“When you look at the entire table and you put all those pieces together, it looks like the Southeast would be a very advantageous place to go or to be when you graduate from FSU,” said Dr. Joseph Calhoun, an economics professor at FSU.

These positive statistics affect the university’s Career Center, which reported an increase in employer participation in the career fairs and career days it holds.

“I feel like we are slowly turning the corner economically, and of course its been well chronicled that the labor market is always the last part of an economic recovery,” said Dr. Jeff Garis, director of the FSU Career Center.

Slowly is the key word. Even though the job market for college grads seems to be improving, it is still difficult, requiring many students to be more aggressive and more flexible when considering their career options.

“It’s important for students to take the blinders off and understand that they can market their major in a lot of different ways,” said Garis.

That means some students may end up taking a job not directly linked to their major, or completely unrelated.

“It’s definitely tough out there,” said Michael Morris, an FSU senior. “You’ll take anything that you get. People are going out there, finding something they relatively want to do, and then using that as a building block.”

Samantha Flamand, a third year senior at FSU agrees that more and more students are looking at immediate employment after graduation as a steppingstone.

“I think college students are being less picky about what they do initially right out of college, and knowing that you shouldn’t have high expectations for how much we’re going to get paid,” said Flamand.

One reason for the perceived increase in college hires is the cheaper employment alternative they provide employers.

“As employers are now recovering and looking to expand their business, they want to do it in a risk averse way, especially when it comes to cost,” said Calhoun. “So they’ll take a chance on a new college grad because they’re relatively cheap and hopefully they can foster them along and turn them into even more productive employees.”

Michael Morris agrees.

“College kids are really eager,” said Morris. “They’ll do hard work for the most part just to put themselves in the market and they’re willing to take less money.”

Despite the reported positive trend in college graduate employment, the general consensus among college students is that the job market looks bleak, a perception consistent with the media coverage of the stagnant 9.6% national unemployment rate. This may not be an accurate portrayal of the college labor market, though.

“You know you need to look at it sector by sector, and industry by industry,” said Calhoun. “When you put them all in the same population and talk about an average, sometimes that can be a meaningless number.”

Flamand agrees that the positive trend in the college labor market runs contrary to the general pessimism reported in the mainstream media coverage.

“I don’t think its being publicized at all that things are getting better,” said Flamand.

Even when considering the discouraging national unemployment rate, college students can be optimistic for their own employment prospects.

“Sometimes the media is too concerned with the bigger picture, and looking at the national unemployment rate as opposed to the state unemployment rate, or the region or the industry,” said Calhoun. “When it comes to you, the only job you’re worried about is yours.”

President Barack Obama at his first State of the Union address.

President Obama gave his first State of the Union address on Wednesday, January 27, and I had my concerns about what was to come. My fears proved well-founded. Dubya’s State of the Union addresses were more than mere political speeches – they were masterpieces of dark, screwball comedy, using blatant absurdity to reveal deep and disturbing truths about our national character. Anyone with a heart and a brain had to laugh, if only to keep from breaking down in tears.

Inevitably, Obama failed to live up to his predecessor. Besides a few quips, the whole affair came off as pretty much sober-minded and reasonable, hardly the laugh riot one would expect from contemporary American politics. However, I’ll do my best examine the speech in a similar manner.

How much of what was said matters?

Obviously, certain parts of the speech matter very much. When the President announces goals and policies for the coming year, we should all pay attention. What doesn’t matter, is how much Obama claims to understand the average American’s anxieties. Every politician worth his campaign contributions says they know how rough it is for the working class, and it’s all touchy-feely bullshit. We already know we need more jobs that pay better. We already know about our own cynical and distrustful attitudes towards the government. We already know Wall Street is doing better than Main Street, and that Tennessee Street is just gross. We already know our own deeply moving and allegorical stories—we’re the ones sending those letters to the White House.

Obama waxing poetic about how much he sympathizes with us isn’t a serious explanation of his new jobs bill. It’s about selling himself as President. I get worried when I see fellow progressives trust that he means every word he says and thus things are great. I voted for the guy, and I support the jobs bill. I don’t think it goes far enough, but it’s something, at least. A good idea, and it was eloquently presented. But that eloquent presentation doesn’t matter. It’s impressive, sure, but what matters is whether or not the bill actually becomes law. And so far, Obama and our Democratically controlled Congress haven’t shown much skill in that area. [Ed. Note: Gotta love conventional wisdom.]

Yes, the Republicans are obstructionist. As Obama pointed out, they’ve nearly annihilated meaningful health care reform out of spite. But Obama and the other Democrats let them do it. Instead of getting organized, making demands, and refusing to take no for answer they twiddled their thumbs playing nicety-nice bi-partisan games that, from the outset, clearly weren’t going to get anywhere. If anything proposed Wednesday night takes a similar route, none of Obama’s inspirational talk matters, which in many cases would be very problematic, possibly catastrophic. We need debt forgiveness for student loans. We need better public transportation, and the new high-speed railway connecting Tampa to Orlando is an awesome example. We need clean energy – although I have to say, the nuclear power, offshore drilling, and “clean” coal plants Obama mentioned don’t really fit into that category. But still, these are all important issues.

Also important, as the President mentioned, is the necessity of transparency in government and the protection of civil rights. What went unmentioned were some major blemishes on the President’s record concerning both issues. On the issue of transparency, there was the secret negotiating with the pharmaceutical lobby. As for civil rights, there’s the continued practice of holding terror suspects without officially charging them with a crime, a practice that can extend to American citizens like Syed Fahad Hashmi.

To be fair, Obama has kicked ass over that last guy, even if he’s not as funny, and his big ears will never be able to rival that dumb squint. By and large, 2009 was a vast improvement over the preceding eight years of crazy. Even I felt a twinge of hope in my lightless, anarchic, distrustful heart at the mention of troops coming home. And I love having a President who can fluently speak his native language. Unfortunately, if it turns out all he can do is talk, that’s not good enough. The planet is melting, and most of my friends can’t afford to see a doctor when they need to. That’s not funny.

[Ed. Note--In keeping with the promise laid out in The Yeti Blog's original charter, we are happy to supplement Matthew's serious commentary on the State of the Union with a light-hearted musical interpretation from The Gregory Brothers (schmoyoho), the folks behind the Auto-Tune the News series of web videos. We hope you enjoy.]

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.